Posts By Dan Ryan

Mom died/joyous grief

My mom died May 3rd, 2023. She lived in Dallas, Texas, and was 80 years old. We weren’t estranged, but we weren’t close. I last saw her when I flew to Dallas for Thanksgiving in 2013. I stayed two weeks and spent the whole time getting drunk at her house, sobering up long enough every couple of days to drive to the convalescent facility where she was staying to visit her.

She had been in that facility for over a year by then, following a serious fall at her house, and stayed in it for the rest of her life. Or until March, 2023, when the home closed down and she was moved to a hospice facility. She died there two months later.

I said my goodbyes a few days before her death via Zoom. I am deeply estranged from my younger sister, but she was in mom’s room and orchestrated the Zoom thing via smartphone. Though she was heavily sedated for pain and non-verbal, I spoke my final peace to mom. This is a photo I took of her last time I saw her:

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I’ve spent most of my time since mom’s death beating the shit out of myself for not being a better son, for not visiting her more often, for not truly talking to her about the things she had done throughout my life to both enhance it and to fuck it up.

Mostly to fuck it up, if I may be both honest and blunt. Over the years she threw a couple of sizeable monkey wrenches into the clockworks of my life. In particular she rejected and repudiated my wife. I never could forgive her for that. But it doesn’t matter now. We all end up gravel and dust scattered above and within an indifferent Earth.

So I’ve been sitting here for past six weeks trying to get a handle on my very complicated grief, and waiting to hear something, anything, about my mother’s estate. My sister doesn’t want any contact between us and therefore she will tell me nothing. Like I said, we’re deeply estranged.

So I’ve been coping with my grief with my photographic work, of course, which is how two weeks after mom died I stumbled across a group of young women in San Francisco holding street a memorial for a deceased friend. These women were basically partying in the streets near a Baptist church in the Sunnydale neighborhood, drinking and dancing and carrying on to honor and celebrate the life of another young woman who had recently died.

A wake for Monette Lathan...
San Francisco, California, May 2023

It was beautiful to behold, as were the women in the participating crowd. And it was a joyous, exuberant release of grief unlike any I had ever seen. I was honored to be allowed to photograph it.

A wake for Monette Lathan...
San Francisco, California, May 2023

Because these images are special to me. I look at the women in these pictures and I’m able to live through them a little. I see in them a joyous release of grief that I am unlikely to have, though I keep trying to summon up some kind of redemptive happiness in knowing my mom no longer feels any pain and nor has any Earthly worries.

A wake for Monette Lathan...
San Francisco, California, May 2023

Worries and pain are part of the constant feast reserved for the palates of the living. We dine on them every day. But when I look at these images of these jubilant young women, I see people turning pain into joy to honor a fallen friend.

A wake for Monette Lathan...
San Francisco, California, May 2023

I hope you see that too in these photographs. And I hope Boba Ryan, my mother, and Monette Lathan, whose memorial you see in these photos, truly rest in peace.

A wake for Monette Lathan...
San Francisco, California, May 2023

You can see all the pictures I took at this street memorial here.

A wake for Monette Lathan...
San Francisco, California, May 2023

(Photographed in Dallas, Texas in November, 2013 and San Francisco, California in May, 2023. See my other work on Flickr and Instagram.)

Waiting in the monkey patch for the Great Ape

Five years sober and

I’m loving every minute of it and

I’m hating every minute of it and

I’m indifferent to every minute of it.

Humans are complex, you know?

I mean, it’s not an excuse,

but it is a reason.

When I decided to stop,

to decline my animal vice,

I started building a new type of animal.

An animal that’s neurotic,

depressed, insecure,

and happy to be dying at a slower rate.

These things were always there,

but are now enhanced, intensified,

because there’s no monkey-time booze

within my grimacing veins to suppress them.

The depression is so intensified it could drive you to drink,

which is an irony I hold close

so it can warm my aging heart.

And dependability.

I’m more dependable than I used to be,

I can come pick you up at

the Kaiser ER or the police station

at three o’clock in the morning.

I won’t be passed out

under beer sweat-soaked sheets

next to a box of old family photos on my cold basement floor.

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So keep that in mind,

I might come in handy.

I mean, someone’s got to have a use for me, right?

Because some days

I find it hard

to even find a use for myself.

There’s so much shit

swimming around in my head

even though the beer filters are five years gone.

Five years gone and still no love for Jesus.

I’m actually rather proud of that.

I’d rather spend the rest of my life

Struggling like Sisyphus

to find solace in myself

than to look to some spook in the sky

and try to give his ass all the credit.

I’m the one doing the fucking work, for chrissakes.

If I’m to suffer or sparkle, I’ll take all the blame.

I’ll get more of the royalties that way.

There’s no shame in suffering,

and no suffering in shame.

And when I get to that place,

if I get to that place,

where I never think about booze at all,

how much of my life I wasted with it,

it will be, I think it will be,

a notable, happy day.

I could use a notably happy day, let me tell ya.

And I will give you a call, and

offer to take you out for a drink.

You can pick the bar.

I’m pretty sure they’ll have club soda.

(Photographed from my front porch one sunny day in October, 2022. See my other work on Flickr and Instagram.)

Memorial at an Eagles hall…

The first Sunday in April, I went to a memorial at an Eagles hall for a man a I never knew.

Memorial at an Eagles hall...
Brisbane, California, April 2022

My wife and I went together. She had known the man, and so had my brother-in-law who was also at the memorial.

Memorial at an Eagles hall...
Brisbane, California, April 2022

My brother-in-law actually served as the quote-unquote minister for the event, and he said some kind words of remembrance for a man who was universally liked by everyone in the room.

Memorial at an Eagles hall...
Brisbane, California, April 2022

I did what I always do at the many memorials I’ve attended at the Eagles hall for people I didn’t know or barely knew.

Memorial at an Eagles hall...
Brisbane, California, April 2022

I wandered around and shot photos.

Memorial at an Eagles hall...
Brisbane, California, April 2022

I’m not an Eagles member, but I have friends who are. And I know other members on a social basis. And, like my wife, I knew some of the folks who knew the deceased, the man we were there to honor.

Memorial at an Eagles hall...
Brisbane, California, April 2022

It was a somber event, but it wasn’t entirely dour and funereal. I talked to a lot of people, and photographed them, and that was fun for me.

But as I was leaving after an hour and a half I remember hoping that when I’m dead there’s 55 or 60 people who remember me fondly enough to gather together at an Eagles hall on a Sunday afternoon and talk about what a good man I was.

Photographed at the Eagles hall, FOE Aerie #3255, in Brisbane, California on April 3rd, 2022.

See the entire collection of 33 photographs on Flickr.

See my other work on Flickr and Instagram.

The dancing kind

The dancing kind

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of woman

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dances with her daughter

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in the street

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on the sidewalk

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with joy

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with abandon

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both of them radiant

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like champions of love.

(Photographed in San Francisco, California in February, 2022. See my other work here and here.)

Betty was Hawaiian

Betty was Hawaiian, she was short, she was my mother-in-law, she was (I think) 86, she was beautiful, she knew she wasn’t educated but she knew she was smart, and she died two years ago today.

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Betty loved mumus (she looked great in them), she fiercely loved my father-in-law (her second husband), she was gentle and compassionate, she loved her kids deeply, and she hated Windows computers and didn’t trust email or electronic commerce.

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Betty was a Christian, she fucking hated it when I cursed around her but eventually grew to tolerate it, she once “paid” me 1,200 bucks (when I was recently unemployed from teaching public school) for a series Windows computer lessons it quickly became clear she never intended to take she just wanted to help me financially, and she made this sort of jellied white crab dip that it was absolutely to die for.

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Betty laughed like she invented laughing for all of humanity, she knew I struggled with alcohol abuse for years but loved me anyway and didn’t judge me for it, and she died peacefully in her sleep in a mumu thankfully never knowing how much I wish I’d spent more time with her during our lives and how much I’m going to miss her until the end of my days.

(Photographed in Brisbane, California at Christmastime in 2014, 2015, and 2018. See my other work here and here.)

Glass pipe sidewalk

This is a short, simple story. I was on my way to my favorite discount supermarket in San Francisco when I encountered these three guys on the sidewalk at a bus stop, and a couple of the gents decided to smoke some meth.

They were really nice guys, though, so don’t get the wrong impression.

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The fellow who initially pulled out the glass pipe wore a wrist band that suggested he’d recently been a patient in a hospital someplace. While a few people at the bus stop looked on with obvious disdain, he pulled out his lighter and sparked up his gear…

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Then he took a few drags from it. He sucked on it like an infant feeding from a milk bottle because his mother’s breasts had run dry…

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Then he passed the glass to his pal, who had been patiently waiting to take a few hits himself. The big fellow on the end didn’t partake, he just kept chatting with me about the plumbing business he was saving money to open up one day. He and his companion were sitting on a huge audio speaker and I have no idea why…

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And’s that’s pretty much it. Despite the fact that these gents were smoking hard drugs at a moderately-busy bus stop, It was all rather low-key and somehow calm and civilized.

Like I said, they were really nice guys.

(Photographed in San Francisco, California in October, 2021. See my other work here and here.)

Sidewalk soul food buffet

About once a week, usually in the late morning, I drive into San Francisco to do my money errands at a Bank of America at the corner of Leland Avenue and Bayshore Boulevard. Sometimes when I’m standing in line at the ATM, there’s a guy across the way setting up a large buffet.

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I’ve heard he runs a soul food kitchen in Hunters Point, and on slow days he drives a couple of miles south to this San Francisco neighborhood to make a few bucks selling jambalaya, fried catfish, greens, mac and cheese, and other soul food comfort classics. He had a menu displayed that identified him as Chef Tasty, and the ‘tasty’ part surely described the odors from the food he was putting out.

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The day I shot these photographs I literally didn’t have the time to do much more. The chef himself was in a bit of a hurry setting up his buffet; in the moment we briefly chatted he didn’t seem like he had the time yet to wait on me anyway. So it all worked out.

But the next time I see him I’m getting me a full plate of whatever he’s selling that day.

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(Photographed in San Francisco, California in September, 2021. See my other work here and here.)

Her daddy died the day before

I was on Sunnydale Avenue in San Francisco recently at weekly food bank, working on a project of mine about people and community outreach during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. And this beautiful little girl caught my eye because of the bright pink braids she had flowing from her hair.

The girl was with a friend of mine, who is also the girl’s godmother, and she had no problems with me taking a few pictures of the girl and her striking hair.

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As I was lifting my camera to my face to begin snapping, my friend told the girl “Hold it up, let him see it.” What she meant was the laminate hanging from the girl’s neck, a family photo featuring the girl and her father right in the center of it. The girl’s father had his arms around her.

I looked a question at my friend, who said to me “Her daddy died yesterday. He got shot.”

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Ten minutes later I was carrying a box of food bank vegetables to the girl’s nearby apartment, and I asked my friend what happened. She told me the girl’s father was shot dead nearby when he was trying to score some weed from a man who had a gun and who was just too crazy to be dealing weed at that particular moment in time.

I looked at my friend and asked her “Who dies over weed anymore? It’s fucking weed, it’s legal.”

Neither one of us had an answer. Then she walked into the girl’s apartment, and I put the box of vegetables on the trunk of a car parked in front of it and left.

(Photographed in San Francisco, California in August, 2021. See my other work here and here.)

The first place I’ve gone in over a year and it was Hollister

During the first weekend of June, 2021, my wife and I took a trip together for the first time since the Covid-19 lockdowns began in California in March of 2020. After 15 months of basically being locked up together for 23 hours a day, she and I were looking forward to the short road trip.

A shop on San Bruno Street, part 1...
Hollister, California, June 2021

We were headed to Hollister, California, to stay with my niece and her family. Her daughter, my great niece, was graduating from San Benito High School.

Decorations for a high school graduation...
Hollister, California, June 2021

We got to my niece’s house on a Thursday afternoon, but after spending the night and waking up there Friday morning it was clear that the whole endeavor was a disaster for me.

Lawn care on Cienega Road...
Hollister, California, June 2021

My rheumatoid arthritis had decided to act up, and I was in a lot of pain. So I decided to drive back on Friday to my quiet house just south of San Francisco where I could get the rest and sleep I needed to get through the arthritis flare-up.

A front yard on California Street, part 2...
Hollister, California, June 2021

I left my wife in Hollister, to enjoy the company of our family and the graduation festivities. I drove back down to get her that first Sunday in June. I really wish I had been able to spend that whole weekend in Hollister, but at least while I was there I shot some pictures I liked.

See the entire album here.

(Photographed in Hollister, California in June, 2021. See my other work here and here.)

Roadside repairs

During the first week of May I was driving from San Francisco into Brisbane, California along Bayshore Boulevard, and I encountered this interesting scene…

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It turns out that the man with the beard was driving along Bayshore Boulevard too, but the upper control arm on the driver’s side of his big old car snapped and he had to immediately pull over and call an emergency mechanic.

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So while the mechanic worked away, I snapped a few photos and the young man and I talked for a few minutes. He showed me the groove out on the street that his damaged car had cut into the pavement as he pulled it out of traffic.

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He was a nice young fellow, very warm and open.

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The mechanic was a nice guy too, but very busy.

(Photographed in Brisbane, California on May 04, 2021. See my other work here and here.)

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